Labor News

As of this writing negotiations are continuing between the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), representing almost 80,000 workers, and telecommunications giant Verizon Communications.

Almost two months after five south Texas church workers were fired for unionizing, the ensuing dispute between the United Farm Workers (UFW) union and the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville has been partially resolved.

DETROIT, Mich. – With its gleaming stainless steel arches reaching toward each other 63 feet in the air, a monument to Michigan’s working class, the Michigan Labor Legacy Project, was unveiled Aug. 20 in downtown Detroit.

Strikebreaking and union-busting has taken many shapes and forms over the years, but the goals haven’t changed. While the “profession” started as an obvious, and usually violent, infringement upon workers’ rights to organize, it soon metamorphosed into something much more subtle and insidious.

Bloodied but unbowed after a terrible state legislative session, Texas labor is laying plans to continue fighting. At the AFL-CIO convention in Austin July 24-26, over 400 delegates applauded the “Killer-D” state representatives who fled the state in May (and again in late July) to thwart a redistricting power grab by their Republican opponents. They endorsed the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a national Cesar Chavez holiday, and dozens of other progressive proposals.

Thousands will be marching in the streets of Miami, Florida, during the week of Nov. 17-21, protesting the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). They will pour into Miami from all over the country and from all over the world. The protesters will be trade unionists, anti-globalization activists, environmentalists, family farmers, religious activists, civil and human rights activists. Thousands will come to Miami to make their voices heard at a meeting of trade ministers from around the Americas.

DETROIT – Thirty thousand retired steelworkers from bankrupt National Steel are seeing their worst nightmare become reality after a bankruptcy judge ruled earlier this month that they are no longer eligible for health care coverage.

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is going to put the unfair treatment of Haitian asylum-seekers on the national agenda, said Winie Cantave, co-director of the Miami-based Unite for Dignity. According to Cantave, hundreds of Haitian refugees, including entire families with small children, have been kept in indefinite detention after being apprehended on Florida’s shores.

DETROIT – “We want a living wage!” shouted 100 people conducting an informational picket line and rally at the Cintas industrial laundry plant here July 31. The line included workers from the plant, members of United Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) Local 129. The Detroit facility is one of the few organized Cintas facilities in the country.